


For as Long as He Should Live

by dmitrydechagny



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, F/M, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 03:50:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16526738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dmitrydechagny/pseuds/dmitrydechagny
Summary: In the wake of the events at the Opera Populaire, the man who used to be the Phantom of the Opera comes to know with unwavering certainty one thing: he will never love another human as he loved Christine.-------------------------Based off of the realization that Erik wears his ring on his left ring finger in Love Never Dies.





	For as Long as He Should Live

The cold night air ripped at the unmasked half of Erik’s face, but not one shiver shook his skeletal form. No wind, no snow, no force of nature or of man could phase him in his state of heartbreak. _Christine, my Christine_ he wailed within his head. He let her go, he made her go, but then she had come back. She came back! To him! And for a fleeting second he had let himself believe, with some foolish childlike hope, that she would ask to stay. To leave not with the empty headed Vicomte, but with Erik. The thought still brought a stupid, yet small, smile to his blue lips.

He closed his eyes and imagined Christine, asking to stay with Erik, wanting to run away with him. Him taking her hands and saying, “I know just the place, my angel.” Them going, together, to the house he had built for them on the Northern shore of France. Her marveling at the gardens, trimmed with red roses just for her. Her grinning at the parlor, covered with Persian rugs he had collected during his years in service to the Shah. Best of all, her singing in the music room. The acoustics were engineered to suit Christine’s voice exactly, to help her pick out the remaining imperfections in her technique, to accentuate the glorious soprano the two of them had spend years crafting. The pair could spend days in there, him playing the grand piano, her giving life to his compositions and eventually it wouldn’t just be the two of them in the mansion, and-

The sound of a branch cracking broke Erik away from his fantasy. He glanced around in panic to find no one there. The adrenaline ran out of him and he remembered with a start where he was. In a snow-covered forest northwest of Paris…without Christine.

He would never see her again. He couldn’t see her again. He would ruin her. She would be on the run from the police as he now was. The Vicomte would no doubt send fleets of gendarmes looking for her. Erik could never do that to her. She did not even want him to. She did not want him.

But how he wanted her. In all ways. He wanted her with him until the day he died. He wanted her to stand beside him; to hold him in his weakest moments; to turn to him when he she needed help; to love and honor him, as he would her, for all the days of their lives. Erik had known for a long time that he would never love another human as he loved Christine, but it hit with a rattling intensity, an unwavering certainty that he had never felt before.

He looked down at the ring on his pinky then, without a moment of thought, slipped it off and put on his left ring finger. A symbol that he would love Christine for as long as he should live.

Though he doubted how long that would be.

**Author's Note:**

> I rarely write fic, but I felt inspired and it just kind of wrote itself.  
> Follow me on Twitter: @dmitrydechagny


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